Soldier's Girl

Hollywood is mourning the death of English film director, screenwriter, and actor, Bryan Forbes. Forbes, who helmed The Stepford Wives in 1975, passed away Wednesday, May 8, at his home on Surrey, England. Forbes had been battling an illness prior to his passing. He was 86 at the time of his death.
Forbes has a long resume for his work in the film industry. Besides directing The Stepford Wives, he also co-wrote the screenplay for Chaplin — the biopic about Charlie Chaplin's life, starring Robert Downey Jr. Forbes earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing The Angry Silence (1960), featuring Richard Attenborough.
Forbes made his film debut as a director in 1961 with Whistle Down the Wind starring Alan Bates and Haley Mills. He also directed King Rat, The Wrong Box, International Velvet, and Long Ago Tomorrow.
But prior to writing and directing, Forbes started out his career as an actor. He appeared British films including An Inspector Calls and The Colditz Story in the 1950s. After that, he formed a production company with his buddy Attenborough.
In addition to his work in the film industry, Forbes was also a published novelist. He penned several books including The Soldier's Story, which was published last year.
In 2004, Forbes was a Commander of Order of the British Empire for his contributions to the arts. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Follow Lindsey on Twitter @LDiMat.
More:Our 10 Favorite Google Doodles Jeanne Cooper Dies Reggie Bush Is a Dad
From Our Partners:What Happened to 33 Child Stars (Celebuzz)40 Most Revealing See-Through Red Carpet Looks (Vh1)

The Season 6 premiere of Mad Men starts with a nasty trick. The episode begins through the perspective of a man lying on the ground, looking up at the ceiling while someone beats on his chest. In the background you hear Megan, Don Draper's wife, screaming. We're so used to seeing this world through Don's perspective we think, "Oh, Don Draper had a heart attack." Immediately it flashes back to him and Megan on the beach in Hawaii and you think, "Oh, we're going to find out how Don ended up having a heart attack." But later in the episode we learn, well, it wasn't Don at all, it was his doorman, who he, Megan, and their cardiologist neighbor watched have the cardiac arrest. What a dirty, stinking trick.
It feels like a bait and switch: we're supposed to think that Don is in danger of dying when he's not in danger at all. But it isn't a trick. It is Don's perspective. In fact the whole episode, like so many in Mad Men history, is staring toward death — with Don gazing in that direction not only because of the ill doorman but also because he is, once again, searching for identity.
Last season we saw Don struggling against his natural impulses. After marrying Megan and chasing his happiness, he came clean with her about who he is and his dark past. He was trying to integrate Dick Whitman and Don Draper and become one fully-formed healthy individual. By the end of the season, when he walks away from Megan and was eyeing that other woman in a bar, he had clearly failed. This season seems like it is going to be about his relapse, about the cost of his failure or, even worse, his sinking into irrelevance.
This episode, however, was all about artifacts. We see each of the four major characters we follow in the premiere – Don, Roger, Betty, and Peggy – each dealing with their identity, who they are and what the world thinks of them, and what objects from other people, dead or alive, have left them.
Like Greg Brady with the bad luck Tiki god, Don Draper finds his artifact in Hawaii. The first sequence of the show is very odd, showing Don and Megan in paradise and he's enjoying himself, but totally silent, conspicuously so. It's like he can't speak when he isn't being his authentic self, when he's playing the role he thinks he's supposed to. This is the same Don Draper who left his daughter's birthday party to go sit and drink alone in his car.
RELATED: 'Mad Men' Goes to Hawaii for Season 6
The first time he speaks is to tell the soldier at the bar that he was in Korea, and to speak honestly about himself. When the drunk grunt asks Don to walk his soon-to-be wife down the aisle at his wedding, Don says, "You don't know me. One day you'll regret it." But the soldier says that one day he will be just like Don, a "veteran who can't sleep and talks to strangers." Though Don didn't start the conversation, what is his job other than "talking to strangers." Don puts aside his existential declaration that no one knows him (there is a lot of everyone not knowing anyone in this episode) and officiates his wedding, another moment of what seems like real joy, a moment of true love, even though Don rails later that the word is being overused and spent of its meaning.
Later, when he's back in his Manhattan apartment, when the slide of the ceremony comes up he can't talk about it to everyone else in the room. He is once again back to being inauthentic. (And, of course, notice the difference between Don's presentation with the carousel in this episode and his presentation with the carousel in Season 1.) Originally he was powerful and persuasive and using his own experience to win over the clients. Now he's entirely silent and no one wants to buy his experience.
Don's artifact, of course, is PFC Dinkins' lighter, which he and Don mistakenly switched at the bar. This time he has taken on another soldier's identity by accident, unlike the first time when Dick Whitman stole Don Draper's identity on purpose to achieve the American dream he always thought he was promised. Don thinks about taking on the soldier's identity, a soldier who is violent, impetuous, and stupid, all things that Don is not. He throws the lighter away, rejecting this new identity, but Megan brings it back to him. She proves that Don can't be his true self with her, she wants him to maintain an alter ego, whether it's Don Draper or this new PFC Dinkins, a man who gets sloppy drunk and asks inappropriate questions of strangers. Megan doesn't want the real thing, she wants a fake. Don eventually gives the lighter to his secretary and says to send it back, without a note. He wants to distance himself as far from this man as he can, no matter the joy he might have brought him on the beach. For Don it's more important to be honest and grow into himself again than take someone else's identity.
Don is also struggling with the inscription on the lighter. "In life we often have to do things that aren't our bag." Don's initial life with Betty were all things that weren't his bag – having the wife and kids and settling down in the suburbs. He rejected that motto to find happiness with Megan in the city and that wasn't his bag either. Don seems to have internalized this motto, but rails against it, selfishingly doing the things that are right for him even if they harm other people.
It seems like things at work aren't Don's bag these days anyway. He hates that the photographers are there to take everyone's pictures and they rearranged his office. He hates that he has to, once again, put on a facade for the public. The photographer tells Don to just be himself, but he can't. He no longer has any idea what his self is. He stands in his rearranged office thinking back on the waves of Hawaii as the snow falls, and you can't help but think of that falling man in the opening.
Later when presenting to the clients he gives them a presentation about a man who goes to Hawaii and is transformed, he just disappears into paradise (which seems to be Don's new fantasy about how to gain happiness). The client ask Don where the man went. "He jumped off," Don replies, once again recalling that falling man from the opening credits. Everyone thinks the guy killed himself, something Don didn't even realize he was telegraphing, something he might not have even considered as an option, until now. Is Don destined to be the one who falls off the top of the building, like people have always thought he is?
Things at the office aren't going well. Not only is there the strange interloper Bob Benson (who seems to be serving some dark force with a smile on his face), but Don no longer holds his sway with the clients. When they don't like his presentation, he gets forceful, explaining himself frantically, using his old penchant for getting aggressive to get results. But this time it doesn't work. He caves and tries to give them what they want; anything to prove he still has it, he's still a genius. Even that doesn't work. He has failed, and not only has he failed with his vision, he even failed with a compromised version of it. Don is struggling with everything, not only his sense of self, but his creative vision.
Don Draper, being Don Draper, is also having trouble at home. How do we know? Well, he doesn't care much about Megan or what she does or what she has to say. She's off having authentic experiences (working as an actress, going hunting for weed in Hawaii) while he's moping around with his white people problems wondering about what is going to happen to himself after he dies. Boo-hoo.
He's also sleeping with his neighbor's wife. We first meet Dr. Rosen in Don's elevator and it appears like they have a loose friendship. There's something about Rosen's skill as a doctor that intrigues Don, that he has somehow mastered death. It's like he has a real gift, a real profession, not just serving corporate shills by captivating the public's desires. Of course Rosen wants to be Don, a good-looking, confident man who can get anyone to do what he wants using the power of his persuasion. They both think the other has it all. Don offers the man a camera and, more importantly, his friendship, but the shock is that Don is sleeping with his wife all along.
Like always, Don's dalliances aren't about sex, they're about escape. They're about bucking against the norm and hoping that the feeling he creates through sex will somehow allieviate his anxiety about life. (Rosen even says, "People will do anything to alleviate their anxiety.") Yes, Don isn't sleeping with Rosen's wife because she's attractive (which she is) or he's in love with her, she has been reducted to an object of her own, another artifact. He's sleeping with her so that he can try to steal some of Rosen's magic and possibly inject it into his own life. He's fighting against being himself by trying consume another man's life yet again.
It's not working. He tells his new playmate, "I don't want to do this anymore," but he doesn't mean sleep with her, he doesn't even mean cheat on his wife in general, he means he doesn't want to have to deal with yet another existential crisis. He just wants an answer, he just wants any answer. Sadly, he's not going to find it from any of the other characters.
Roger's story, of course, is about death. Duh. It contains two dead people, him sitting in analysis mockingly pleading for his doctor to explain it all, and he's fretting that he thinks that life is just a meaningless series of experiences, doorways that are boring to open. Roger, like Don, has also fallen off the path to enlightenment. Last season he took LSD, divorced his wife, and was looking toward the future to try to find something worthwhile (Season 5 ended with us staring at his bare ass as he embraced the world). Either he's off that path or not finding it has put him right back where he was in the first place.
He's chasing after another comely brunette (who we don't get the pleasure to see) and pining after Joan. Maybe she's what will make him happy? It would have made the rest of us happy if we had seen a little bit more of her in the episode.
Anyway, Roger has two reilcs. The first is the water from the Jordan River his father brought back for his mother that was used to baptize almost everyone in the family. While freaking out at his mother's funeral (I would too if someone had barfed in the umbrella stand, but his outburst seemed a little over-blown), Roger makes the ultimate Freudian slip and says it's "my funeral." His ex-wife Mona comes upstairs and suggest maybe he would be more happy if he connected to the people who already love him rather than chasing after another one.
10 Things You Should Know About the 'Mad Men' Premiere
That's when he goes downstairs to talk to Margaret. He brings up the family and presents her with this artifact, but all she wants her grandmother to leave her is money. Roger wants to talk about love and she only wants to talk about commerce. Already the water is losing its potency, Margaret didn't use it to baptize her son and, after her conversation about refrigerated trucks (not a bad investment at all!) she leaves it behind on the couch. She doesn't want a bit of the past, she doesn't want a bit of Roger, all that she wants is money and the future it can buy her.
Later Roger is looking for a shoe shine but his shoe shine man has died. His daughter sends along his shoe shine kit to Roger who takes it into his office and finally cries after feeling nothing about the death of his mother or Mona having found a new man in her life. This is what makes him cry. A shoe shine kit. Sometimes it feels good to let it all out, even if it's over some chemical soaked box.
The important thing about the artifacts in the episode is that they aren't good as objects, only instruments that people are willing to use. If, like the water and the shoe shine kit, they're not being used by someone then they're just so much junk, but, like Sandy's violin, when they're being used, they're the things that connect us all to each other.
Now Roger doesn't have any connection to anyone and it's starting to wear on him. He mentions being shipped out of Pearl Harbor (it's startling how three men in the premiere are all defined by their wars) but his cohort and his mother are dying off. Even the old ways are dying off. There's no one to know how to use a shoe shine kit and Roger is completely obsolete, left with nothing but some worthless junk, a bunch of stories no one wants to hear, and a room of women he's disappointed. He doesn't need analysis, he just needs something better to do.
As I said before, Betty's artifact is Sandy's violin, at least initially. Her relationship with Sandy is interesting in that everything that Betty says is defeated by her actions. Oh, our Betty, still a little bit fat (but she's "reducing!") and completely out of touch with herself. She is constantly defending her choice to stay at home and be the pretty wife and mother of increasingly ungrateful children, but that's what she never wanted at all and she has always fought against it. It's as if it's easier to propogate a myth than actually change.
That's why she's trying to find Sandy and why she holds onto Sandy's violin, since it is a symbol for the dream Sandy has for a better future. Anyway, Sandy says she wants to take off to New York and live an exciting life and Betty says that her life as a model in the Big Apple wasn't all that and she should wait until she's ready Later, when the hooligans at the St. Mark's flop house tell her that they "hate [her] life as much as [she] does," she fights against them. She tells that they are awful and she storms out, ripping her coat. Even being there she is changed, the fabric of her existence very literally sullied by her being in the tenement. (Anyway, they didn't hate her "goulash" all that much though.)
RELATED: What Is This 'Mad Men' Season 6 Party All About Anyway?
But she leaves the violin there. Sandy is already a lost cause and Betty knows it. During her kitchen scene with Betty (which is about as touching as ice cold Betty ever gets) Sandy says, "It's amazing how quickly some people come up with lies." We all know that applies to Betty, but it applies to Sandy as well, who lied about Julliard and where she was going. She is going to turn out to be just like Betty, another girl disappointed by her options in life, someone who will defend her choices even as they make her miserable.
There is also something about Betty that wants to destroy Sandy. The younger generation is making the older characters increasingly nervous, but Betty seems to be the only one to wish harm on the younger children, when she makes that really inappropriate joke about Henry going to rape Sandy while she holds her down. That's the only thing that I can think of to explain her shockingly inappropriate comments, delivered with a smirk so small they seem to be entirely serious.
In the end though, Betty's real artifact is her hair. Like Don and Roger, this is something she is doing to try to be more authentic. This is, of course, a direct reaction to the hooligan calling her hair "bottled" when he reads her real color is brunette on her driver's license. She doesn't want to hide anymore. She wants to be the real Betty who may be a bit chunky and have brown hair, not the perfect Barbie doll everyone told her she had to be for Don (and look at how well that turned out anyway). Ironically, her new hair color is just as manufactured. She didn't let her roots grow out, she is just trying to cover up the new facade with the old one. Of course the kids hate it. The kids will always hate everything their parents do, especially when, like Bobby, he is faced with the reality behind the illusion that his mother has always sold to him. She is now "ugly," and he sees it for the first time.
Peggy, of course, is the exception that proves the rule. If we are looking at Don and how far he has fallen since the first episode, look at how much Peggy has risen. Her artifact is the lost footage that she found and, unlike everyone else, she can interact with that footage and use it to make beautiful music, as it were. She can shape it into something that is great, and that is what makes her different from the other three. This is Peggy's moment like Don's with the slide projector all those years ago. She is finally, truly ascendant.
And while she's is using strategies and tools that she learned from Don, she has also found her own strategies. Last season, when she went all Don Draper on the Heinz baked beans people and tried to force them to take her idea, she was shot down. Now, when the earphone people don't like her solutions to alter their aborted Super Bowl ad, she finds a way to get them to agree to let her do her job by being nice and courteous. While everyone still considers her part of a "frat," she has found a way to be both a woman and an executive at the same time, using a more subtle tactic that would have made a man look weak.
No, Peggy isn't far away from Don at all and she stays up late at night with Stan on the phone, still in close contact, letting him listen in on her big triumph. It's as if it doesn't really happen for her unless there is a way for it to get back to Don. And as much as she wasn't like Don with the client, she was just like him with her staff: stern and demanding but, at the end, giving them her sandwich and showing a bit of care. It was a classic Don Draper move.
But still, she isn't entirely confident with the power. Later, Ted, Peggy's boss, tells her that she has to tell the rest of her employees to go home. "They're not waiting for me?" she asks incredulously. Why would all these people be paying attention to her, trying to prove to her that she's a good worker when that's still all she wants is someone else's approval: Don's.
Peggy, unlike all these other people, is actually happy. Her sense of self-worth comes from her work and being great at her job. She doesn't see why these kids wouldn't want to be at work on New Year's Eve because that's just where she wants to be (I wouldn't want to be with her boyfriend Abe either, considering his vegetarian diet is giving him the trots).
Peggy is the younger generation that everyone is afraid of but, being part of the establishment, she is separate from it. When she hears about the Tonight Show stand-up act about the soldiers in Vietnam who cut the ears off their enemy, she blames the act for ruining her commercial. She doesn't blame the soldiers for doing something immoral and violent, she blames the "hippie" comic who brings it to the attention of the public. She is firmly on the side of "the man."
Though she may not be on the same page as her peers, she is the only one of the cast who is active and vital, the only person who is interacting with her object in a way that is bringing her happiness. That either makes her incredibly power or incredibly delusional, waiting for an awakening that may or may not happen. But one thing is for sure: Peggy is in control while everyone else is not.
Follow @BrianJMoylan on Twitter
[Photo Credit: AMC]
From Our PartnersJessica Alba Bikinis in St. Barts (Celebuzz)Pics of The Rock Making Things Look Small (Vulture)

This article contains major spoilers for Les Misérables.
If you're like me and grew up listening to and watching Les Misérables, you're likely bringing a lot baggage to this week's movie adaptation. Shedding expectations is key to watching something you treasure evolve into new media, and it's the same with the time-honored musical. Legend or not, to work as a movie, it had to be tinkered with, had to be pushed and challenged more than in any of its theatrical stagings.
So how did it fare? Prepare to geek out beat by beat to Les Misérables.
2012 will go down as a year of cinematic innovation, starting with Peter Jackson's divisive "48 frames per second" filming technique, used to make the fantasy worlds of The Hobbit more realistic. Tom Hooper attempted the same feat in Les Misérables, stripping away the expected glossy exteriors of a movie musical by recording all of the songs live on set. Like the high frame rate projection, the purposefully imperfect style is instantly noticeable and hard to swallow after decades of big screen musicals training our ears. In the film's opening number, "Look Down," we see the imprisoned Jean Valjean and his fellow chain gang inmates pulling ships into the docks. It doesn't get much worse. The number booms like the show, but in its strive for reality, the voices of the singers are overwhelmed by the orchestra. Turns out, it's not easy to sing when waves are splashing in your face and you're pulling an enormous ship to harbor. The number sets the stage for the rest of the picture: in the theatrical version, the instruments and voices work as one. Here, they're at battle. It's hard to fully enjoy "Look Down" because the number works as a testing ground for the style.
As is the case in the stage show, Les Mis works best when the focus is on Valjean. Every character gets a big, memorable song, but each one of Valjean's beats packs an especially emotional punch (which explains why the second half of nearly every incarnation tapers off until the final moments). My biggest fear going into the film was Hugh Jackman. The diehard Colm Wilkinsonian that I am worried that the Wolverine star was too young, too Hollywood, for the role. Unlike many of the men who have played Valjean on stage, Jackman's voice is airer and under strain from the harsh conditions (as he mentioned in Hollywood.com's interview, the scenes in the beginning of the film were shot at the top of a mountain in freezing weather — not exactly the ideal setting for a Broadway musical). Jackman makes the part of Valjean his own, and I fought my brain's urge to yearn for the phrasing established by the show. That's the whole point of on-set singing — let the actors perform the songs, not simply regurgitate them like they're on stage at the 10th Anniversary Concert. Jackman discovers a broken version of Valjean that's never been accomplished on stage in numbers like the prologue and "Valjean's Soliloquy." Plus, it's nice they threw Wilkinson a bone and brought him in to play the Bishop of Digne.
Floating with the ripped up parole papers eight years into the future, Tom Hooper's vision for the factory of Montreuil-sur-Mer is stunning and stark. "At the End of the Day" sticks mostly to the theatrical orchestration, albeit with fewer voices (logical, as there aren't that many people working at the factory). It's simultaneously fresh and familiar, the catty torturing of Fantine even more terrifying when depicted in the "real world." After the number, every Les Mis fan discovered a bit of a shocker: the blueprints had been tinkered with. Fantine's firing leads into new glimpses of Javert arriving to town, conversing with Valjean, the runaway cart that leads to a suspicious act of strength, and the raunchy "Lovely Ladies." These were necessary improvements — only in seeing the movie does one realize how silly it is to feature Fantine's big number, "I Dreamed a Dream," before her descent into hell. Beefing up Valjean and Javert's intertwined relationship is also key, although clunky, with the cacophonous spoken/sung dialogue written for the film never quite fitting in with the previously penned material. Though with the gentlemen out of the way, it's Anne Hathaway's show to steal. "Lovely Ladies" is less of a showstopper than it is on stage, but it paves the way for the tremendous "I Dreamed a Dream," a one-shot, close-up rendition that shatters any known recording. We've never seen a Fantine who had to sing through tears and a runny nose. It all adds to the impact of the song.
STORY: 'Les Mis' Movie Stars: Better Than Broadway?
Les Misérables lost me a bit around "Who Am I?," a number that needs just as much oomph as "I Dreamed a Dream." A song of redemption, Valjean's second introspective soliloquy ends with him closing his conversation with God and shouting to the masses. The film version plays it surprisingly one-note, once again featuring Valjean in one room, speak-singing until he finally walks over to the court to reveal his true identity. Hooper and Jackman side with realism over theatrical, but the number needed the boost. It needed a note that could resonate with the reveal of Valjean's scarlet letter, the "24601" prison tattoo. We didn't even get that reveal! Hooper has an amazing eye for bold framing, but where this number falls short — and where the movie does as a whole — is in innovative staging.
Though as soon as Les Mis inspires talk of lackluster blocking, then comes Fantine's death and "The Confrontation." What could have been rigid feels well-timed and organic, Valjean and Javert swordfighting during their musical duel. Russell Crowe's monotone speak-singing works when he's given meaty drama to tear apart, and "The Confrontation," a literal song fight scene, is magic.
The next chunk of Les Mis may have been the biggest surprise. After "Turning," young Cosette's whispy "Castle in the Cloud" is my least favorite song in the show. Forcefully sympathetic, the despairing tune is like nails on a chalkboard. In the film, it's actually quite lovely, with Isabelle Allen owning the song with the perfect touch of sadness. Her whisper of "Cosette, I love you very much," gave me chills — sorry every other girl who had to perform this on stage like a fifth grade recital. Allen was mesmerizing.
The other surprise: "Master of the House" as a low point of the film. A much needed injection of comedy falls flat in Hooper's version, with Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter delivering surprisingly low energy as the lovable scumbag pair, the Thénardiers. The number feels entirely rushed, skipping over the drunken debauchery choruses to get on with the rest. It's a causal affair, both Cohen and Bonham (two performers who know how to properly play big and wild) delivering a hushed rendition of the rowdy number; the editing turns it into a jumbled sausage fit for serving at the pair's inn. Like Crowe as Javert, both work better in the intermittent sing-speak pats (like the hilarious "The Bargain"), but in a moment when the film needs a boost, they fizzle out.
POLL: Does 'Les Mis' Need an Intermission?
As in the show, the random arrival of Javert into Valjean's life never really works, but I appreciate conjuring up a sequence in which our redemptive convict must flee from his pursuer. The chase scene answers the lingering question of how Javert continues to miss Valjean time after time, and how Cosette and her father figure end up in Paris. It also sets up the new number, "Suddenly," a sweet lullaby that fits nicely into Valjean's song book. While it's not a time in the show that needs beefing up (a new song in Act II for Valjean or anything for Older Cosette would have been appreciated), "Suddenly" isn't an egregious addition to the sacred text thanks to Jackman's gentle high range.
Thanks to the enhanced escape from Montfermeil, Javert's "Stars" receives the buildup it deserves. Unfortunately, it can't be devoured by Crowe's nasally singing voice. The actor lights up the speak-singing but flatly mumbles "Stars" — another rushed number. Maybe I can't shake memories of Philip Quast, but Javert's songs demand a soldier's ferocity and the gleam from a twitching eye that comes with years of obsession. Crowe looks like he just showed up for work.
Hooper and screenwriter William Nicholson take necessary liberties with the fragmented stretch of "Éponine's Errand," "ABC Cafe/ Red and Black," "In My Life," "A Heart Full of Love," "The Attack on Rue Plumet," and "On My Own." Let's face it: the show doesn't handle it smoothly either, Cosette and Marius only crossing paths for the first time in this chance meeting of Valjean, the Thénardiers, Éponine, and Javert. If the movie suffers from weaving all of these moments into one is that it feels as claustrophobic as in a theater. With a rotating stage with sets in motion, we end up traveling more in the stage version than in the movie — a mind-blogging feat.
What really works throughout all the confusion is Eddie Redmayne's Marius, Aaron Tevit's Enjolras, Daniel Huttlestone's Gavroche, and the students of the revolution. Truth: Marius never entirely works for me as a character in the stage productions, reduced to a heartthrob who dabbles in political mumbo jumbo in order to be put into the thick of danger when the time is right. Redmaybe brings him to life. He doesn't sound like a formal singer and it allows him to avoid placation by the material. He's a real person! He bonds with his buddies in the bar and it creates a warm atmosphere like real friendships do. And even though Cosette is still just arm candy in the film version of Les Misérables (and extra vibrato-y in the hands of Amanda Seyfried), Marius feels like a man who struggles with his rebellious agenda and love at first sight. "A Heart Full of Love" really plays.
I know Les Mis fans love them some Éponine, another latter half character that never amounts to more than a hamfisted emotional pawn. Samantha Barks does not help this matter in the big screen translation — a beautiful voice isn't the only requirement for Les Misérables. She packs one, coy and playful with Marius and cutting loose in her big number "On My Own." Sadly, she's still in stage mode and her style doesn't translate to the intentionally rusty tactics of on-set singing. It's too good, she's too bright. The production cranked up the rain on all of her numbers, and it feels like a tactic to mask her over-the-top crying.
The weirdest movie moment of 2012: Jackman's Valjean running to Seyfried's Cosette's aid, bare chest open and exuding sexual tension. The moment creeped me out so much, "One Day More" is a bit of a fuzzy memory. Okay, maybe the awkward scene wasn't that distracting, but Les Misérables' Act I finale is a wildly choppy experience, as loud as the stage version minus the unity. The movie had the impossible task of mimicking the play and the cross-cutting style doesn't bellow in the same way as a full ensemble number.

The following article contains massive spoilers (and not just like, "Estes acts like a d-bag" spoilers) about the Season 2 finale of Homeland.
In 2011, United States Marine Nicholas Brody was rescued from an underground terrorist base in Afghanistan, after having been captured and held prisoner by the forces of al-Qaeda for eight years. Brody, as he is affectionately called by his wife and friends, was returned home to America, where he would reunite with his family, earn notoriety as a nationwide hero, and accelerate professionally to the level of congressman and vice presidential hopeful. But there was a side to Brody that the world didn't see, even with the influx of reporters and public figures storming his home from every corner of the Virginia countryside. What CIA Agent Carrie Mathison, her associates Saul Berenson, freelance surveillance experts Virgil and Max, and the highly addicted Homeland audience began to suspect: is this dude a terrorist? Long story short, yes. At least, he was.
Sunday night brought the second season of the Showtime series to a close, also seeming to put a lid on all of our distrusts regarding Brody. The episode concluded with a gigantic explosion, which took the lives of dozens of attendees of Vice President Walden's funeral, including his wife and teenage son, and CIA Director of Counterterrorism David Estes. Absent from the event, quite conveniently, are Carrie Mathison and Nicholas Brody, who sneaked away to have a romantic foray just in time to avoid the wrath of the bomb... which was detonated from within Brody's car.
If you didn't catch the episode, the above synopsis will probably suggest with near certainty that Brody was responsible for the act of terrorism (which was followed by a television broadcast of an al-Qaeda message proclaiming patronage of the explosion). But Homeland seems to want us to think that our pursed-lipped hero is in fact innocent. The final moments of the episode had Carrie sending Brody off to the freedom of Canada (where no one will ever find him!), and set our favorite secret agent off on a quest to prove her inscrutably beloved soldier's innocence — such, we assume this to be the course of action for Season 3/the show's Lifetime movie adaptation: My Boyfriend Is Not a Terrorist: The Carrie Mathison Story.
But something seems... missing. We were invited into the world of Homeland on the premise of a huge-scale whodunit. For the majority of Season 1, fans weren't sure what exactly was up with Brody — was he really a terrorist? Was Carrie Mathison, in fact, crazy? And what was lurking beneath Saul Berenson's beard? All mysteries with which we happily engaged. But Season 2 put a lot of this ambiguity to rest, instead allowing us to watch idly as one crazy, adrenal situation after another played out onscreen. And this seems to be the way Season 3 is setting up to introduce its formula.
What we really need from the show, however, is a return to this active-viewing form: the "Is Brody a terrorist?" game that was as fun and engrossing as a round of international Clue. Of course, that's just one opinion. A few members of the Hollywood.com staff chimed in to give their take on directions that would best suit Homeland's third season:"Despite what the showrunners may say, the Season 2 finale still had me doubting Brody's intentions as well as his feelings for Carrie. Season 3 needs to get rid of this question mark once and for all by telling us definitively whether Brody is a good guy or a bad guy. Because this flip-flopping business is exhausting. Also, the 'Carrie is alone and crazy' card is so thoroughly played out, in order to hold my interest Season 3 needs to give Carrie a team. Let's see a Brody Berenson Mathison Quinn coalition (a la Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce). And bring back Galvez!" - Abbey Stone
"If Season 3 went back to exploring Carrie's work on the ground floor (especially now that Saul is in charge), not just her trying to cover up for Brody, the show might have a shot at getting back to the fascinating, intelligent show about terrorism that it it was when it started out." - Aly Semigran
"I think that Season 3 of Homeland should mostly be about Dana. She needs to get a new haircut and change her name so that no one knows who she really is. I think we should see her go to college and meet a nice boy. She has a hard time trusting men, considering that her father is now an exposed terrorist and that her last boyfriend ran over a lady and left her dead body in the street and then he died in a CIA bombing that her father may or may not have orchestrated. But she meets a guy and they fight and break up and then they get back together and she wears a lot of black... Oh, wait, that's what I DON'T want Season 3 to be about." - Brian Moylan
"Homeland would benefit from jumping ahead 100 years into the future. Don't worry — they invented technology to keep Carrie and co. around. So they'll still be trying to figure out if Brody is a terrorist or not, but now they'll have laser guns and teleportation machines." - Matt PatchesWhat are some of your ideas about where the show should go from here?
[Photo Credit: Kent Smith/Showtime]
More:
'Dexter' Finale Recap: Bonded in Terror
'Gossip Girl' Series Finale Countdown: The Crazy Fashions of Chuck Bass
'Bachelorette' Wedding Special: The 10 Weirdest Moments of Ashley Hebert's 'I Dos'
From Our Partners:
’The Hobbit’ Cast: A Who’s Who New Character Guide (Moviefone)
’Les Miserables’ Unscripted: Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway On Singing And Being Modest

Top Story: AFI Tags Samurai, Nemo Year's Best
The American Film Institute has announced its top 10 choices for this year's best in film and television. In film, the top 10 AFI Awards were, in alphabetical order: American Splendor, Finding Nemo, The Human Stain, In America, The Last Samurai, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Monster and Mystic River. In television, the top 10 were: Alias, Angels in America, Arrested Development, Everybody Loves Raymond, Joan of Arcadia, Nip/Tuck, Playmakers, Soldier's Girl, 24 and The Wire. A 13-person jury of scholars, artists, critics and AFI trustees discuss, debate and determine the AFI's most outstanding achievements of the year. "We don't rank them because what we want to celebrate is the creative collaboration in front and behind the camera that made these stories possible," Jean Picker Firstenberg, AFI director and chief executive officer, told Reuters.
Hussein's Capture Covers Networks
The news of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's capture completely dominated cable and broadcast networks Sunday morning. Reuters reports CNN edged the competition by going on the air first at 5:03 a.m. after grabbing the Reuters story. CNN's reporter, Alphonso Van Marsh, was also with the unit that captured the former Iraqi dictator. CBS, NBC, Fox News and MSNBC followed in quick succession. ABC put Good Morning America's Charles Gibson on in the morning but flew anchor Peter Jennings from a stint in Los Angeles to New York to do the story on the evening's World News Tonight. CBS and NBC also ran special reports in the evening on 60 Minutes and Dateline, respectively.
Jackson on Verge of Being Charged
Michael Jackson could be charged this week in the child molestation case currently pending against him, The Associated Press reports. Law enforcement officials have yet to disclose their evidence against the pop singer, who was arrested Nov. 20, but former Santa Barbara County sheriff Jim Thomas, who has discussed the case with Santa Barbara County District Attorney Thomas Sneddon, expects the charges to allege that Jackson molested one child repeatedly, probably over a period of more than a month, AP reports. "You will see allegations of multiple counts of child molestation on this particular child," Thomas said, despite the recent report about a confidential memo, leaked last week from a Los Angeles County child welfare office, which said there was no basis for allegations that Jackson had molested the boy. In the memo, which was written last February, Jackson's accuser, his brother and his mother all denied the boy had been molested, AP reports.
Bowie Kicks Flu Bug and Kicks Off Tour
After postponing several dates due to illness, David Bowie finally took the stage Saturday in Montreal to kick off his A Reality tour, Reuters reports. "I didn't know if I could do the show tonight; I felt really ill, to be honest with you," Bowie, 55, revealed near the end of his 110-minute set at the Bell Canada Center. But, in his words, the show turned out to be "really memorable" as he performed hits from all facets of a diversified career spanning almost 40 years, Reuters reports. It's his first concert tour in eight years.
Snoop's in tha Dogg House
Actress Doris Burns, who appeared in Snoop Dogg's MTV show Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, has sued the rapper, claiming she was unwittingly made to appear as if she were naked and engaging in sexual relations with another actor, AP reports. In a lawsuit filed Friday, Burns accuses Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, and MTV of breach of contract, fraud, invasion of privacy and defamation. She is seeking unspecified damages, AP reports.
Actress Crain Dies
Actress Jeanne Crain, best known for her Academy Award-nominated performance in the controversial 1949 classic Pinky, in which she played a black girl passing for white, died Sunday of a heart attack in Santa Barbara. She was 78.
Free Willy Whale Dies
Keiko, the 6-ton killer whale who portrayed Willy in the hit film Free Willy, died Friday in western Norway's Taknes Bay of pneumonia at the age of 27. Taken into captivity when he was two years old, the whale was rescued from horrid conditions at an aquarium to star in the film. After preparing him for several years, Keiko was released back into the wild in 2002 off the coast of Iceland where he was born, but he ended up swimming to the Norwegian bay to live.
Role Call: Idol's Frenchie Lands Gig
Frenchie Davis, the spirited second season American Idol contestant who got booted for allegedly appearing on an adult Web site, has landed a starring role in a Los Angeles production of the musical Dreamgirls, AP reports. "There are a lot of people who were on American Idol," Davis told AP. "But not all of them are getting lead roles."…ABC is bringing Stephen King's novel Desperation to the small screen in a three-hour adaptation, Variety reports. The story centers on a man who winds up in a bizarre mining town in Nevada named Desperation after being pulled over by the strange local sheriff. King, currently recuperating from a bout of pneumonia, wrote the screenplay.

Top Story
Rosie O'Donnell, who recently came out as a lesbian and expressed her opposition to the Florida ban on adoptions by gay parents, has asked to have her name and narration removed from the Oscar-nominated documentary short Artists and Orphans: A True Drama. The film is about a New York theater group that goes to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to assist orphaned and abandoned children.
The talk-show host's publicist, Cindi Berger, told the Associated Press that O'Donnell found out the film's creators, including the director, Lianne Klapper McNally, were tied to the Fourth Way School, a cult-like group that focuses on personal development but apparently bans homosexuals and believes they should not be parents. O'Donnell, who has three adoptive children, was "angry that the background [of the filmmakers] wasn't disclosed to her," Berger added.
In General
Gwyneth Paltrow is complaining Hollywood is just too "male dominated." According to PageSix.com, she told a German newspaper, "I would like to leave. At the moment, there is definitely a lack of interesting female roles and nothing that I would really like to undertake." The "real" world isn't much better, Gwyneth. Get used to it.
Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger are in negotiations to star in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain, the big-screen adaptation of Charles Frazier's best-selling novel about a wounded soldier's treacherous journey home from the Civil War. Tom Cruise was reportedly attached to the project last year but has now dropped out of the picture. Good thing for ex-wife Nicole--that could have been awkward. Filming is tentatively set to start in July.
First celebrity boxing, now amateur nude modeling. How low can you go? Fox is developing a two-hour special, Girl Next Door: The Search for a Playboy Centerfold, that will follow 12 women shooting for a chance to be the next pinup for Playboy, Variety reports. There is no air date as yet (sorry, guys), but Fox is aiming for a May sweeps airing.
Comedian Paula Poundstone received high praises from Judge Bernard J. Kamins for following her terms of probation, including attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and regular counseling sessions, in the child-endangerment case against her. Poundstone lost custody of her three adopted children when she pleaded no contest last year to driving the children while under the influence. She will return to court June 5 for a probation review.
USA Today reported that NBC has decided not to air liquor commercials, after all. Three months ago, NBC lifted its self-imposed ban against televised liquor ads but received such a backlash of criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups that the network reconsidered. NBC said in a statement, "We are, therefore, ending the first phase of branded social responsibility advertising on our network and will not proceed into the next phase of carrying product advertising for distilled spirits." In laymen's terms, you won't be seeing anyone on NBC swigging down a bottle of vodka to try to get you to buy it.
R&amp;B crooner Alicia Keys is going to have to build a trophy case in her house soon. She picked up three awards, including female entertainer of the year, at the 16th Annual Soul Train Music Awards on Wednesday. The other big winner of the evening was the Isley Brothers, who also took home three awards.
Irish rocker Bono may be headed for Parliament before he knows it. U2's lead singer and his tireless campaign to help the world's needy were recognized by U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on Wednesday. At a United Nations press conference, O'Neill told Reuters, "This is a person who's invested enough of his own time and energy to learn about and go see what life is like on the ground that he has my respect." The two will be traveling to Africa next month. How cozy!
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in favor of artist Stevie Wonder, saying that he did not violate copyright laws with his song "For Your Love." Derrick Coles and Gwendolyn Daniles, who claimed Wonder stole the copyrights of the song from them, were unable to provide proof of their allegations.
Singer Bonnie Raitt got her own little bit of fame Tuesday as she received her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame--right in front of her record label, Capitol. "I can't believe that in my 50s, I'm standing here with my Walk of Fame star," Raitt told CNN. "If someone proposed this to me 20 years ago, I would have said, 'No way,'" she said.

Synopsis

On the fourth of July 1999, not long after the installment of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, Barry Winchell, a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division, was brutally murdered by a fellow GI when it was discovered that he fell in love with Calpernia Adams, a transgendered entertainer in a Nashville nightclub.